Chapter 6. Literary History in the Parian Marble

Biographies of ancient Greek poets and musicians frequently rely on information found in the Parian Marble. [1] The inscription is held as a reference point, even when the validity of dates is called into question. [2] Yet inquiry into how biographical details were attained rarely goes beyond matters of chronology and source criticism. In this chapter I shall explore the methods and attitudes that the Parian Marble shares with ancient Greek traditions of thinking about the literary past. I begin by discussing the nature of literary history in ancient Greece, and the extent to which it is of primary interest in the Parian Marble.

1. The Parian Marble as Literary History

Literary history as a discipline studies past processes and events related to the production, performance and reception of literature. It examines materials and contents (texts in both their oral and literate dimensions), agents (composers, writers, performers, sponsors, audiences, judges, readers, and interpreters), and institutions (occasions of performance, schools, libraries, etc.). In ancient Greece, literary history was not an intellectual discipline in its own right, but reflection on the literary past is attested from early times. [3]

Before the fourth century BCE, matters of literary history, including references to both poets and musicians, appear embedded in works of historians, such as Pherecydes, Hellanicus, [4] and Herodotus, as well as sophists, such as Theagenes of Rhegium and Hippias of Elis. Evidence is fragmentary and atomistic, often incidental, and always focused on famous individuals, rarely attaining abstraction and generalization through reflection on genres, periods, or styles. Main centers of interest were the genealogy of poets, their relative chronology, and first inventions. [5] In the last half of the fifth century BCE, [6] when issues of literary history were staged in Athenian comedies (Cratinus’s Archilochuses, 450/449 BCE, and Aristophanes’s Frogs, 405 BCE), questions of style (and perhaps of ideological stance too) seem to have prevailed over issues of chronology or development. Literary history fully emerged in the transition to the fourth century BCE, gaining independence from general historiography, especially in the works of Aristotle [7] and his school. [8] The lists of victors at the Pythian games compiled by Aristotle and Callisthenes [9] and the DionysiacVictories, on Athenian Tragedy, Comedy, and Dithyramb, [10] both probably based on archival work, provided a chronographic grid, essential to historical research on poetry. [11] Of narrative nature were the monographs on poets, written by Glaucus of Rhegium, a precursor in the field, [12] as well as by Aristotle, Phainias of Eresus, and Demetrius of Phalerum. Similar works on individual poets (or poets per genre, e.g. Lysanias of Cyrene’s OntheIambicPoets) were written by Heraclides of Pontus, Chamaeleon of Heracleia, and the Epicurean Metrodorus of Lampsacus. [13] Judging from surviving fragments, those monographs added an interest in biographical detail, with a special inclination for anecdotes and aetiological explanation, to the common genealogical, chronological, and heurematic outlook. However, by the time these monographs were written a body of biographical interpretation had already conflated with local traditions, thanks to the well-known tendencies of extrapolating from poetic works biographical details, and explaining texts by details of their authors’ biographies. [14]

Literary history is very prominent in the Parian Marble, as has long been noted. [15] However, its uniqueness in this respect among ancient chronographic material has not been fully appreciated. Literary history is entirely unprecedented in ancient Mesopotamian chronicles [16] and appears in the ancient Greek chronographers sparsely. The verse chronicle of Apollodorus (FGrH 244 F 1–61), written in the second century BCE, included some intellectual history, but the extant fragments focus particularly on philosophers [17] (Diogenes Laertius, the main intermediary, may be responsible for somewhat distorting the picture). [18] Thus, reference to ancient intellectuals (poets, philosophers, historians, and orators), [19] as Diodorus’s occasional closing of a year’s account by reference to cultural figures indicates, [20] seems to characterize the Hellenistic approach to chronography. [21] And yet, the Parian Marble is extraordinary in two respects. First, it displays a high number of cultural figures and events, in relation to political and military ones. Indeed, the inscription mentions fifty-six figures and events from the cultural field (twenty-nine percent), sixty-nine from the political field (thirty-six percent), forty-eight military events (twenty-five percent) and eighteen religious events (ten percent; distribution is discussed in detail in chap. 4, sect. 2). [22]

A second outstanding feature of the Parian Marble is that cultural figures and events belong almost exclusively to the fields of poetry, music, and drama. Indeed, the majority of cultural figures mentioned are poets and musicians, thirty-one in total: [23]

In contrast, only four intellectuals from other fields are named: [25]

Socrates

(A60, A66)

Anaxagoras

(A60)

Callippus

(B6)

Aristotle

(B11)

Other ancient chronological lists contrast sharply with the Parian Marble. The following examples, representative of chronological materials on stone and papyrus and of those known through indirect transmission, will clarify the tendency of early Greek chronography to record a broader spectrum of fields but many fewer intellectuals.

Let us begin with two epigraphical testimonies, the Roman Chronicle and the Getty Table, the only instances of the count-down chronicle, examined in our treatment of the genre of the Parian Marble (chap. 3). [26]

Column B of the Roman Chronicle, covering 200 years of Greek history (from the early sixth century BCE until 385/4 BCE) in twelve entries and twenty-eight lines, mentions ten figures and events from the cultural field (forty-eight percent), five from the political field (twenty-four percent), six military events (twenty-eight percent). [27]

Thus, the Roman Chronicle has a high proportion of cultural figures and events, but mostly from the field of Philosophy (seven out of ten), [29] whereas the Getty Table (II B) [30] includes an equal number of philosophers (three) and poets (three): [31]

the Wise Men

(II B, line 6 suppl.)

Chilon

(II B, line 7)

Aesop

(II B, line 9)

Simonides

(II B, line 16)

Anaximander

(II B, line 17)

Anacreon

(II B, line 21)

Ibycus

(II B, line 22)

Pythagoras

(II B, line 25)

Xenophanes

(II B, line 30)

If these two miniature chronicles were located originally in libraries (see chap. 3), perhaps the content of the book collections influenced the emphasis of each tabula.

Let us now turn to a papyrus text known as the Oxyrhynchus Chronicle (Chronicon Oxyrhynchi), [32] an Olympic victor list with historical notices covering the period 355–315 in ten Olympiads. It was written in the first half of the third century CE. Six columns of text have been preserved, approximately thirty-six lines each. In more than 200 lines, we find only three figures from the cultural realm:

Plato

(1, Olympiad 108.1)

Speusippus

(1, Olympiad 108.1)

Isocrates

(2, Olympiad 110.3)

Things are similar in the Olympic victor list compiled by Eusebius of Caesarea in the first quarter of the fourth century CE, which is the most complete of its kind (from the first to the 249th Olympiad) and has reached us through the manuscript tradition. [33] Eusebius’ list has few historical notices, among them only two references to cultural events: the first Carneian festival (26th Olympiad), an important event for ancient chronography since Hellanicus’ CarneianVictors, and Nero’s kitharodic victory (211th Olympiad).

It is only in Jerome’s Chronicle (380/381 CE) that we find a continuous ancient chronographic text where intellectual history features prominently. This Latin work is a translation of Eusebius’ Canons (Chronici Canones), completed by 325 CE. [34] The section of Jerome’s Chronicle overlapping the thirteen centuries of Greek history presented by the Parian Marble mentions 100 intellectuals (they make about twenty-five percent of Jerome’s historical notices). [35] Half of them are poets and musicians. Since an Armenian translation and a few Byzantine chronicles attest the vast majority of the references, they may well be considered as representing Eusebius’ original. Eusebius, in turn, excerpted earlier chronographic sources, both Greek and Christian, among them Alexander Polyhistor, Castor of Rhodes, Diodorus, Porphyry and Iulius Sextus Africanus; some information may have been derived from Eratosthenes and Apollodorus. [36] It is indeed difficult to determine the stage of the tradition to which Jerome’s selection of poets belongs, whether to Eusebius or any of his intermediaries or their sources. Still, albeit a late witness, Jerome’s Chronicle supports the view that cultural history was conceived as an integral part of chronography in the late antiquity. The scope, however, is broader than that of the Parian Marble. Literary history includes pre-Homeric musicians (9, with Terpander and Aristoxenus for the historical period) and epic poets (8), and we find elegy, iambos and lyric poetry (19) better represented than the dramatic genres (12). Intellectual history is prominent as well, including philosophers (25), law-givers (3), sages (5), historians (6), sophists (4), orators (2), scientists (3). Even a painter and a sculptor are not missing.

As this brief survey indicates, the Parian Marble is rather idiosyncratic among ancient Greek chronographic materials. While Olympic victor lists, the best represented genre of ancient chronography, contain but few references to cultural figures, they feature prominently in the known examples of the count-down chronicle. Even if the use of cultural figures is typically Hellenistic, as Wiseman suggested, and as the much later Chronicle of Jerome may perhaps imply, the unusual prominence of poets and musicians in the Parian Marble suggests that literary history is essential to the text’s original intent. An additional feature of the inscription further supports this claim.

As we have seen, by virtue of their synchronization with other people and events, poets and musicians often function as chronological milestones. However, in a number of entries (thirty percent, twelve out of thirty-seven entries) there is no correlation between poets and musicians and other people or events. Such is the case of Terpander (A34), the victories of Melanippides (A47), Telestes (A65), Aristonous? (A67), Polyidus (A68), and Anaxandrides (A70 suppl.); similarly, with the death of Aeschylus (A59), Euripides (A63), Philoxenus (A69), Timotheus (A76), Sosiphanes I (B15), and Sosiphanes II (B22). The references are unnecessary from a pure chronographic point of view, for they add no relevant intervals nor create synchronies. Were they absent, no significant gap would be noticed. Hence, the dating of poets in those cases is an end in itself. Most of the superfluous references are artists of the so-called New Music (Melanippides, Telestes, Polyidus, Philoxenus, Timotheus, and possibly Aristonous) and post-classical dramatists (Anaxandrides, Sosiphanes I and II), which reveals a special interest in contemporary performance poetry. If the Parian Marble was located in the Archilocheion (see chap. 1, sect 5 above), it may have promoted the performance of current poetry along with Archilochus’s poems.

In sum, the high incidence of poets and musicians on the Parian Marble, many of them inconsequential from a purely chronographic point of view, strongly supports the notion that embedding literary history in panhellenic history was a main purpose of the inscription. Although information was culled from a number of sources, the emphasis on poets is probably a tendency of the author. The rest of this chapter will be devoted to examining the methods by which this purpose was achieved, in the context of the ancient Greek traditions of literary history.

2. Four Trends in Literary History

What kind of information about poets and musicians does the Parian Marble offer? At first sight, it seems biographical. We read about poets’ births and deaths, travels and exiles and, most of all, victories. But perhaps this perception results from our own tendency to use the Parian Marble as a repository of biographical data. Yet, the value of such data depends on the sources of information used and on the methods by which it was obtained. [37] For the sake of the argument, I propose to distinguish four major tendencies, though things may be less clear cut than the following classification suggests.

2.I. Biographical / Chronographic Information

Details regarding birth, death, travels, and military service may seem to have a documentary basis. However, much biographical information derives from traditional modalities of thought or stems from the application of techniques for chronological computation, one of which is the building of genealogies.

A pervading modality for making literary history, perhaps one of the earliest, is tracing the ancestry of poets and musicians. Indeed, genealogies of poets are a recurrent topic among the fragmentary historians. [38] Such genealogies may well reflect the concerns of later biographers, from whom information was actually received. Still, for some ancient historians such as Hellanicus, genealogy was part of their general approach to the past. [39] Genealogical thinking was predominantly used in the biographies of Homer and Hesiod, whom Hellanicus, Pherecydes, and Damastes asserted descended from Orpheus (and Mousaeus), [40] noting a span of ten generations between them. However, whether the 492 years between Orpheus and Homer in the Parian Marble involve some genealogical computation is unclear. [41] Thus, it remains uncertain whether the Parian Marble endorses Hesiod’s and Homer’s descent from Orpheus.

The dating of Orpheus (A14) and Mousaeus (A15) is rather unusual, when compared to other ancient testimonies. From the sixth century BCE on Orpheus was linked to the Argonauts. [42] Hence, he would have been active one generation before the Trojan War. [43] The Parian Marble, however, locates Orpheus and Mousaeus much earlier, [44] reflecting a view most probably promoted by Eleusis and received through Athenian historiographical sources (I shall return to this point in section 2.II of this chapter). Mentioning one after the other suggests a father and son genealogical link. [45] Thus, notwithstanding textual difficulties, genealogical thinking may lay behind the Parian Marble’s reference to Orpheus and Mousaeus.

Why is this important? One could argue that genealogies have mere antiquarian interest. However, as studies in oral history suggest, genealogies were remembered, even partly invented, because they were useful. [46] As genealogies of kings or families supported claims to land ownership, to rights and power, genealogies of poets and musicians may have been disseminated at local sanctuaries, as well as by musical performers and rhapsodes, such as the Homeridai and the Lesbian kitharodes, who claimed descent from Homer and Terpander. [47] Furthermore, genealogies may provide a glimpse into the professional training of rhapsodes and musicians, who may have received it from their fathers or other male relatives. [48]

Genealogies of poets, often modulated by local or professional patriotism, may also have a historiographical role. Through genealogies literary development can be seen diachronically, at a supra-individual level. The claim that Homer and Hesiod come from the same family and are descendants of Orpheus or Mousaeus perhaps attempts to account for the transmission of creative talent. Similarly with claims that Terpander descended from Homer or Hesiod (Suda s.v.) [49] and Stesichorus from Hesiod (Philochorus FGrH 329 F 213, a Locrian tradition). [50] Thus, genealogies afford quasi-genetic explanations of poetic history by applying a biological metaphor (with some historical basis on the professional training of poets and musicians) to cultural development. It may not be surprising that ancient and modern scholars alike resort to duplicating poets when faced with difficulties in their biographies, not only as homonymous but also as biologically related. [51] The notion that poetic creativity “runs in the family” underlies the mention of Simonides and his otherwise unknown grandfather (A49). [52] The inconsistency between Sosiphanes’ death at B15 and his reappearance at B22, if not a cutter’s mistake, suggests two poets of the same name, construed by some scholars as father and son. [53]

If genealogical thinking is a possible background of some references to poets and musicians in the Parian Marble, relative chronology is more pervasive. Indeed, any historical pursuit requires a systematic structure of time. Historical explanations, whatever form they take, require temporal scenarios. Literary history is no exception. Locating poets in a chronological grid has implications that go beyond the individual biographies of poets. Indeed, statements on influence, imitation, and parody make no sense unless set against a definite chronology. In ancient Greece, literary history had a peculiar connection to chronology. Backed up by poetic texts that were orally transmitted and widely known, as well as by living musical traditions, authors became milestones in the creation of general chronology. [54] The most outstanding examples of synchronism between poets and other people or events are found in Herodotus, whose references to almost all the poets appear synchronized: Archilochus and Gyges (1.12.2), Arion and Periander (1.23), Homer and Hesiod (2.53). [55]

Relative chronology is the backbone of literary history in the Parian Marble too. As we have seen, most entries mentioning poets synchronize them with other people or events (seventy percent). In the cases of Hipponax (A42) and Epicharmus (A55), the technique is made explicit through the expression κατὰ τοῦτον, synchronizing Hipponax with Cyrus’s conquest of Sardis and Epicharmus with Hieron’s seizing power in Syracuse. The fact that both references appear as postscripts suggests that they were added at a later stage of the chronicle’s composition, a testimony to the high consideration poetic matters entertained. [56] Those synchronies, however, do not offer precise dating, but rather a general contemporaneity, probably referring to the period of creative peak, the acme (also known by the Latin floruit, “flourished”), set at the age of 40 by Apollodorus, possibly by Aristoxenus before him. [57]

In a system that dates poets by synchrony and intervals, controversies over antedating one or another, Hesiod or Homer, Archilochus or Terpander, had potential implications for the entire chronological scheme. [58] The relative positioning of poets also played a historiographical role. It often reveals a hierarchic view of cultural production, where “earlier” carries the added value of “better” or more authoritative. [59] Similar values may be attached to the genres that poets represented. [60] Such controversies, however, are absent from the Parian Marble, which records single views on dating, as suits its genre and purpose. [61]

The most famous controversy regarding the relative dating of poets involved Homer and Hesiod. The Parian Marble positions Hesiod one entry before Homer (between thirty-eight or thirty seven and thirty years earlier), possibly following Ephorus, [62] which is consistent with the ContestofHomerandHesiod (45), where Homer is a younger contemporary of Hesiod. [63] Beyond the relative positioning of the poets (relative to each other, as well as to other events, such as the Trojan War, the Ionian migration, etc.), the Parian Marble does not offer specific biographical information. The verb used for Homer and supplied for Hesiod is ἐφάνη, “appeared.” [64] It does not mean “came into being” or “was born,” for which the inscription consistently uses ἐγένετο. [65] The “appearance” of Homer and Hesiod may point more generally to their creative peak or acme. [66]

The Parian Marble perhaps transmitted one side of the controversy regarding the relative chronology of Archilochus and Terpander. Supplementing Archilochus in A33, as Baumgarten suggests, would make him earlier than Terpander, in accord with Phainias of Eresos (FGrH 4 F 85b) and Glaucus of Rhegium (ap. [Plutarch] OnMusic 1132e). [67] Terpander, however, was considered later than Archilochus by Alexander Polyhistor (FGrH 273 = [Plutarch] OnMusic 1133a), and perhaps by Hellanicus too. [68] In either case, relative dating would result from synchrony with other events not mentioned in the inscription. Alternatively, it may stem from a view on the development or importance of the genres that Archilochus and Terpander represent, iambos and kitharody, [69] if not simply an instance of local patriotism. If Baumgarten’s restoration of A33 is accepted, both Archilochus and Terpander would each occupy an entry of his own, which would indicate that they are dated for their own sake. That the Parian Marble mentioned Archilochus seems very plausible, due to the central role of Archilochus in ancient Greek chronography and the location of the inscription on his native Paros; A33 is the only suitable entry for supplementing his name. However, such considerations should not influence the constitution of the text. [70] Hence, the Parian Marble’s position on the relative dating of Terpander vis à vis Archilochus remains uncertain.

Some of the information in the Parian Marble on the travels and deaths of poets seems to derive from biographical traditions. Sappho’s travel or exile to Sicily (A36), not known from other sources, [71] is treated as factual by most biographers. [72] At any rate, information about a statue of her in Syracuse (Cicero Verres 1.4.1257), as well as the lack of local traditions regarding her death, suggest a death away from Lesbos. [73] As for the reference to Aeschylus’ fighting at Marathon (A48), an event registered in his funerary epigram, it was probably transmitted in connection to the date of death, although the ultimate source could be Aeschylus’ own poetry. Other dates of birth seem to result from chronological computation, of the author or his sources. Indeed, ancient chronographers often calculated birth backward, departing from the acme, or taking into account a generation interval from a figure considered older. The synchronism of Euripides’ birth with Aeschylus’ first victory (A50) raises suspicion that Euripides’ year of birth is reached by a combination of backwards computation from Euripides’ first victory (understood as acme) with the acme of Aeschylus. [74] In the same entry, Euripides’ birth and Aeschylus’ first victory are synchronized with Stesichorus’ arrival in Greece. Although the date is too late, [75] information may derive from a tradition developed from an actual visit of Stesichorus to the Peloponnese, as argued by Bowra. [76]

The treatment of the thinking and techniques behind the dating of seemingly biographical events reveals many insights into the historiography of poetry and music, but offers little of factual weight. The travels of Sappho and Stesichorus may reflect local traditions, but information on the early poets (Hyagnis, Orpheus, Mousaeus, Hesiod, and Homer) points towards scholarly views on their relative chronology (relative to other poets and other events). However, it seems that most references to the deaths of fifth- and fourth-century BCE poets (Simonides, A57; Aeschylus, A59; Euripides, A63; Sophocles, A64; Philoxenus, A69; Timotheus, A76; and possibly Sosiphanes I, B15) may have had some literary basis. [77] Indeed, year of death has a better chance of being remembered, recorded, and transmitted than year of birth. References to the years when poets died were probably used, along with dates of first victories, for the computation of some of the information regarding age at the time of death, as well as the year of birth (in the case of Euripides, A50).

2.II. Bibliographical Information

In my treatment of time in the Parian Marble (chap. 5), I suggested that the fall of Troy marks the beginning of the tempushistoricum (A24, 1209/8 BCE). Before that, the inscription mentions three figures related to music and poetry, namely Hyagnis, the restored Orpheus, and Mousaeus (A10, A14 suppl., A15). How was their status understood by the author and his audience? Contemporary reference works regard them as mythical figures, but for many ancient audiences and scholars they were historical; they actually existed in the past. [78] As we have seen, some early historians placed Orpheus, [79] as well as Mousaeus, [80] in the genealogies of Homer and Hesiod, and they were often set at the very beginning of musical history. [81] We shall expand later in this chapter on the role of Hyagnis as inventor of the aulos. As for Orpheus, he was often held to be the inventor of the lyre and the hexameter, as well as the first kitharode. [82] Furthermore, hymns circulated under Orpheus’ name, and oracles under Mousaeus’. [83] The distinction we drew in chapter 5 between ontology and epistemology will be of help here. Thus, rather than mythical figures that may have never existed, it may be better to characterize Hyagnis, Orpheus, and Mousaeus as proto-historical poets and musicians, that is, figures about whom already in antiquity knowledge was known to be obscure.

It is therefore surprising that two of the proto-historical poets and musicians, Orpheus and Mousaeus (A14 suppl., A15), are not treated as first inventors, while Hyagnis is (that heuremata may have been mentioned in the lacunae in both entries cannot be ruled out). Instead, we have references to the publication of their work. [84] As for Orpheus, there is information about specific poems, their content, and even their titles, and similar information may have been given for Mousaeus’ poetry in the lost parts of A15.

Three entries in the extant inscription allude to the dissemination of knowledge: the references to the poetry of Orpheus and Mousaeus, and to Callippus’ Astrology (πο⟨ί⟩ησιν ἐξέθηκε, A14; ποιήσ[ει]ς ἐξέθηκ[εν, A15; ἀστρολογίαν ἐξέθηκεν, B6). Since ancient astronomical records indicate the summer solstice of 330 BCE as the beginning of the first Callippean year, [85] the Astrology may have consisted in Callippus’ computations of the solar year. This was consequential for ancient professional chronography. What could be the rationale behind the reference to the publication of poetic texts by Orpheus and Eumolpus?

The status and date of Orpheus and Mousaeus were disputed in antiquity. Herodotus (2.53) participates in an ongoing polemic when he rejects the possibility of other poets (probably implying Orpheus and Mousaeus) preceding Homer and Hesiod. [86] While the figure of Mousaeus emerged with the Eleusinian cult, ancient sources from the sixth century BCE on connected Orpheus with the Argonauts—that is, one generation before the Trojan War. Such chronology does not appear in the Parian Marble, where Orpheus is dated 190 years before the fall of Troy. Instead, the Parian Marble places Orpheus, along with Mousaeus, at the beginnings of the Eleusinian cult, a connection attested in our sources from the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. [87] The unusual reference to the publication of Orpheus’s works may be a residue of polemics regarding his date and, perhaps too, regarding the identity of the first Greek poet, which is resolved through an Attic and Eleusinian point of view. The Parian Marble’s author was probably following a written source, perhaps the work of one of the Atthidographers, as Jacoby suggests (cf. Philochorus FGrH 328 F 77). Such a source may have supported the historicity and antiquity of Orpheus and Mousaeus precisely by appealing to oral or written evidence—namely, to their poetry.

2.III. Heurematic Information

The search for first inventors, protoiheuretai, is characteristic of ancient Greek thought on creativity and change. [88] Naming individuals as discoverers helps to visualize origins (archai) and causes (aitiai). Heuremata offer concrete answers to difficult questions: how did cultural products come into being? How did they develop? In the history of mousike, first inventors usually help to account for the origins of musical instruments and the emergence of genres of poetry and song.

On the historiographical role of heuremata, the second-century treatise OnMusic attributed to Plutarch is illuminating. We learn that discussion of first inventors was a desideratum in historical accounts of mousike. [89] An example clarifies the abstract tenet: Olympus skipped a note while playing the kithara in the diatonic genus and thus invented the enharmonic genre almost by mistake, [90] an extraordinary scene of a musician at work. Heuremata, then, are innovations or even contributions that introduce something new into preexisting forms. As a speaker of the dialogue puts it, music grows through inventions. [91] Another clear example appears in a passage from Proclus’s Chrestomathia, where the definition of nomos involves a step-by-step account from Terpander to the New Music. [92] Thus, innovations and contributions were often construed as chains of development. [93] Time and again, heuremata are far from simple exnihilo creation, but rather help pinpoint stages in cultural processes.

Controversies about protoiheuretai were common not only within literary and musical history, as in OnMusic, but also among historians, as ancient sources on the origins of dithyramb indicate. [94] Even Pliny’s later catalogue of inventions records contesting opinions (NaturalHistory 7.191–215). In contrast, the simple matching of inventors and inventions, apparent in Clement’s Stromata (1.74–80) is probably characteristic of the didactic use of heuremata.

The history of cultural inventions features prominently in the earliest part of the Parian Marble. [95] In some cases the inscription uses the language of invention (εὗρειν), in others heuremata are conveyed by the adverb “first,” or supported by tradition. [96] Heuremata include:

Hypodicus choruses of men A46 implied Athens Half of the heuremata in the Parian Marble regard two major themes in the history of mousike: the development of music, with Hyagnis and Terpander, and the emergence of Attic institutionalized choral and dramatic competition, with Susarion, Thespis, and Hypodicus. Let us first look into the two entries on musical history.

The Parian Marble attributes to Hyagnis (A10) the invention of auloi and certain auletic nomoi. The Phrygian nature of the invention is emphasized (the adjective Phrygian appearing three times), as well as the cultic link to the Mother of the gods, Dionysus, and Pan. Terpander (A34), in contrast, is described by details such as patronymic and city of origins (“Terpander son of Derdenes, the Lesbian”). His entry does not speak about beginnings but about change (“changed the music of old”). He belongs to a step-by-step account, comparable to those we mentioned before. Could the Parian Marble’s source have construed both Hyagnis and Terpander, even though separated by more than 800 years, as stages in a single process? Apparently not. Hyagnis invented the aulos and auletic nomoi, whereas Terpander belongs to the history of the kithara and kithara playing. The Parian Marble, however, includes the word “auletic” in Terpander’s entry (τοὺς νόμους τοὺ[ς κιθ]α[ρ]ω ι ̣δ̣[ικ]οὺς καὶ αὐλητ[ικ), which was deleted by Wilamowitz, Hiller von Gärtringen, and Jacoby. Nonetheless, as Kivilo points out, two nomoi attributed to Terpander, the Apothetos and the Schoinion, were auletic. [98] The Parian Marble may well reflect a marginal tradition where Terpander made contributions to aulos music. [99] Furthermore, if A14 included a now lost reference to Orpheus’ contribution to kithara music, Terpander could have represented a step in the development of both branches, kitharistic and auletic.

Unlike Terpander, [100] Hyagnis is rather marginal in the history of ancient Greek music. [101] For the invention of the auloi and auletic nomoi, other figures are usually named, such as the Phrygian Olympus and Marsyas, as well as Clonas, [102] Ardalus of Troezen, [103] or Athena and Apollo. [104] These various protoiheuretai probably reflect regional traditions of musical history, as well as local patriotism. [105] The Phrygian branch of this tradition will eventually connect Hyagnis, Marsyas, and Olympus by genealogy or diadoche. [106] In its characteristic uncontroversial style, the Parian Marble’s author follows a single tradition, known also from Aristoxenus, [107] Alexander Polyhistor, [108] and [Plutarch] OnMusic. [109] But most points of contact are found in an epigram of the late third-century BCE poet Dioscorides of Nicopolis:

The auloi was the work of Phrygian Hyagnis, when the Mother of the gods revealed her sacred rites on Cybele. [110]

Noting that the epigram mentions Hyagnis’s invention of the auloi in connection to the epiphany of the Mother of the gods on Cybele, Reizenstein concluded that Dioscorides and the Parian Marble must have used a similar source, the lost work Peplos, [111] attributed to Aristotle. [112] Let us briefly consider the nature of that book.

The Peplos was a miscellaneous work written in both prose and verse. It dealt with topics relating to the Trojan War: genealogies of commanders, the number of ships, including epigrams about them. [113] The scholiast to Aristides gives a list of ancient contests that derive from Aristotle’s Peplos. [114] The list includes the order in which ten contests were founded and the occasion for their foundation. Wendling (1891) made a compelling case for the work’s inclusion of a catalogue of inventions too. Thus, the Peplos seems to share with the Parian Marble an interest in genealogy, heuremata, and agonistic institutions. Authorship has been a matter of dispute. Only late writers, such as Porphyry, Eustathius, and Tzetzes, attributed the Peplos to Aristotle. Others attributed it to Theophrastus. [115] If the testimony of the scholiast to Aristides is given proper weight, the Peplos would be in tune with Aristotle’s and his school’s active role in recording agonistic information. [116] But considering the scanty evidence, it may be enough to conclude with Gutzwiller that the Peplos reflects peripatetic methods. [117]

Back to Hyagnis, the fact that both the Parian Marble and Dioscorides mention Hyagnis as protosheuretes of the auloi and do so in connection to the cult of Cybele suggests the use of a common source, perhaps a work of peripatetic orientation, such as the Peplos seems to have been. [118] A further point of contact will be apparent soon, as we discuss Thespis.

Let us now examine the entries on the emergence of Attic institutionalized choral and dramatic competitions. The Parian Marble mentions comedy first (A39), then a production by Thespis, i.e. tragedy (A43), and finally choruses of men (A46). As we shall see in the next section, these entries differ from agonistic references in their lack of formulaic language, which suggests a narrative source. They also differ from references to the foundation of festivals (Eleusis, Lycaea [?], Isthmia, Nemea, and Delphi) with the emphasis on individuals. Thespis, Susarion, and Hypodicus, however, are far from obvious choices for the origins of Athenian comedy and choral performances.

The entry on comedy (A39), though faulty at a crucial point (“a [cho]r[os] of komo[idoi] was [esta]blished in Ath[en]s,” ἐν Ἀθ[ήν]αις κωμω[ιδῶν χο]ρ[ὸς ἐτ]έθη), seems to have been plausibly restored. The first competition is thus set in Athens between 582/1 and 561/0 BCE (archon’s name and number of years are lost), that is, before comedy victor lists started to be kept and well before democracy (which the inscription sets fifty years later, A45). The Attic demos of Icarium appears as the first to have staged the competition [στε]σάν|[των πρώ]των Ἰκαριέων. Susarion, though clearly conceived as an inventor, is an otherwise obscure figure, mentioned only by late sources. [119] The prize recorded is a basket of dried figs and a measure of wine. We shall soon return to this prize, but at this point it is important to note the qualification “at first,” implying that prizes were later changed (not “the first prize,” in contrast to other prizes in the same competition). [120]

Scholars have found it difficult to reconcile this portion of the Parian Marble with other literary and visual evidence on the origins of comedy, often dismissing the entry as too early and as making too unusual claims, or taking it as evidence for precursors of the Athenian competitive genre. For our purpose, it is important to note that this entry reflects a tradition on the origins of comedy as a competition first held by the demos Icarium, possibly in a Dionysiac context (as the prizes suggest), before the establishment of democracy and before tragedy.

The entry on tragedy (A43) locates Thespis’ first production [121] between 540 and 520 BCE. It is not clear, however, whether the first production was conceived as invention or as a step in the consolidation of tragedy. The entry in its faulty state displays no generic term (though Boeckh suggested δ ̣ρ ̣ᾶμ[α), but the reference to tragedy is clear. Unlike Susarion, Thespis is a more tangible figure in the literary record, [122] and although the inscription does not mention his hometown, tradition has him as Icarian. The prize established, a goat, has a long history in modern attempts to understand the origins of tragedy, linking the “goat song” to the performers or the prize offered, [123] or as a residue of the ritual context. [124] Whatever the realia behind the text, the Parian Marble here reflects a tradition that located this type of dramatic competition before the establishment of democracy.

The entries on Susarion and Thespis have much in common. They both refer to a stage prior to the documented competitions, usually believed to have emerged after democracy. Furthermore, the Parian Marble seems to follow a theory, which originated in Attica and is later attested, for example, by Athenaeus, that comedy preceded tragedy. [125] Furthermore, both genres would have had a common origin in the demos of Icarium. [126] Clues to the whereabouts of such a theory may be found in the tradition regarding the prizes of early comedy and tragedy. The prizes of figs and wine for comedy and a goat for tragedy are suitable to a Dionysiac context, though the connection may be aetiological. [127] Such prizes, which rarely appear in our sources, emerge in an epigram by Dioscorides on Thespis:

I am Thespis, who first modeled tragic song, inventing a new diversion for the villagers, at the season when Bacchus led in the triennial chorus whose prize was still a goat and a basket of Attic figs. Now my juniors remodel all this; countless ages will beget many new inventions, but my own is mine. [128]

In this epigram, Thespis asserts his invention of the tragic song, referring to a festival to Bacchus including a goat (tragedy) and a basket of figs (comedy) as prizes (later changed, cf. ἔτι, line 4). The same prizes are mentioned by Plutarch in a description of a Dionysiac procession (Moralia 527d). [129] Jacoby suggested Attic historiographical writings as a source for the dramatic heuremata. [130] Reitzeinstein, however, noting the similarities between the Parian Marble and Dioscorides’ epigram on Thespis, suggested, as he also did with Hyagnis, that Dioscorides and our chronicle used the same source, namely, the Peplos. [131] It is possible that the Peplos or a similar miscellaneous work of Athenian origins and peripatetic inspiration acted as intermediary.

About Hypodicus of Chalcis (A46; Sutton 3, Ierano T 91) there is little to remark. He is a real hapax in the history of choral performance. [132] Although the choruses of men are usually understood as a reference to dithyramb, this need not be so. [133] The term may well refer to the category of competition also termed “cyclic choruses,” only partly overlapping with the genre of dithyramb. [134] From the reference to choruses of men, some scholars made a misguided inference that choruses of boys were active beforehand. The qualification, however, may equally derive from viewing the past from a period in which there were competitions for choruses of both men and boys. Still, Hypodicus rightly deserves a place in accounts of the early dithyramb, as possibly reflecting Euboean choral traditions, [135] although his date may be too early. [136] Since the entry before Hypodicus mentions the end of Pisistratus’s rule, it has been suggested that the Parian Marble refers to the first choral competition of this sort that was held under the democracy. [137]

The information we find in the Parian Marble regarding the earliest competitive performances of comedy, tragedy, and choruses of men is unorthodox, and the dates are nowadays suspected as guesswork. [138] Some of the unusual details, however, appear in Dioscorides, who also coincides with the Parian Marble on much of the information given for Hyagnis. Dioscorides had a remarkable interest in the history of poets and musicians. [139] Could the reference to the first competition of choruses of men, won by Hypodicus, also derive from the common source of Dioscorides and the Parian Marble?

The musical heuremata mentioned early in the Parian Marble regard developments outside Attica (Phrygia with Hyagnis, A10, Lesbos or perhaps Sparta with Terpander, A34). In contrast, the heuremata relating to institutionalized competition are located in Attica, deriving probably from a source tainted, as many ancient discussion on the origins of poetry, by local patriotism. [140] From that point on, with the sole exception of Epicharmus (A55), the inscription remains focused on Athens.

2.IV. Agonistic Information

The epigraphical record was a major source for literary history in antiquity no less than today. [141] Indeed, a great number of agonistic inscriptions (lists of winners and prizes, dedications, etc.) outline a history without narrative. [142] But extant official inscriptions, such as the Athenian Fasti and Didascaliae, are only part of what must have been a broader record kept in archives of cities and sanctuaries. [143] From the fifth century BCE on, scholars combined archival materials, inscriptional evidence, and oral traditions in works that established the dates of poets, anchoring them in the general chronological setup. Hellanicus has been held as the founder of literary history [144] precisely because his CarneianVictors, a list of winners at the Carnean Games, provided a chronographic grid, essential to historical research on poetry. [145] Aristotle continued the tradition of research into competitive public performances (PythianVictories, DionysiacVictories, and Didascaliae), [146] as did his school (e.g. Dicaearchus’ OnMusicalContests) and perhaps Callimachus too (the lost OnContests, fr. 403 Pf.). Thus, the agonistic record in its literary or epigraphical form had a strong impact on ancient Greek literary history, making poetic victories the most widely attested literary event. [147]

This tendency is reflected in the Parian Marble, too. Indeed, fifteen out of thirty-one poets and musicians are mentioned in relation to victories at Athens. Most entries dealing with literary history from 510/508 BCE on (nineteen out of twenty-five entries, seventy-six percent) record poetic victories (see Table 5 in Chapter 4, section 2). Five of them are not synchronized with other events, which points to their intrinsic importance.

Agonistic information appears in the Parian Marble in rather formulaic terms, with the past verb “won” (ἐνίκησε/ν) and a qualification regarding contest or simply “in Athens.” As we have seen above, references to Susarion, Thespis, and Hypodicus do not share this formula, which suggests that they derive from narrative sources and were, for that reason, discussed among heuremata.

Half of the agonistic entries in the Parian Marble include information about specific contests. In four instances, the category of competition is indicated in the dative case, namely tragedy (τραγωιδίαι, Aeschylus at A50, Sophocles A56, Euripides A60) and dithyramb (διθυράμβωι, Polyidus A68). In four cases, the category of competition may be inferred from the qualification ὁ κωμοιδοποιός (Philemon B7, Menander B14, Anaxandrides A70: ὁ κωμο̣[ ) and διθυραμβοποιός (Philoxenus A69). [148] However, the following victories are given without reference to the category in which they were achieved:

A47

Me[lan]ippid[es]

]εν Ἀθήνησιν (name securely supplemented)

Α49

Simonides the elder

ἐνίκησεν Ἀθήνησι

Α54

Simonides the younger

ἐνίκησεν Ἀθήνησι διδάσκων

A65

Telestes

ἐνίκησεν Ἀθήνησιν

A67

Ar[i]sto[nous]

] Ἀθήνησιν (name partly supplemented)

A71

Astydamas

Ἀθήνησιν ἐνίκησεν

A73

Stesichorus the second

ἐνίκησεν Ἀθήνησιν

A78

?

] ἐνίκησεν

Melanippides of Melos (61 Sutton, T 93a Ierano) is probably the New Music poet admired by Xenophon (Memorabilia 1.4.3). [149] His victory is most likely a dithyrambic one. The elder Simonides (7 Sutton, T 93b Ierano) of A49 is not attested elsewhere. He may be an older relative [150] of the famous Simonides of Ceos, easily identified in A54 by patronymic, birthplace, and the invention of mnemotechnics. The latter is also recorded as winning as didaskalos; thus, this was a choral competitive performance, most probably in the category of cyclic choruses. Telestes of Selinus (36 Sutton, T 78 Ierano) is known as a dithyrambic poet [151] and also as a musical innovator. [152] His victory could be dithyrambic, as well as kitharodic. Aristonous, [153] probably the famous kitharode who, according to Plutarch, won six times at Delphi (Life of Lysander 18.5), [154] may be the same Aristonous of Corinth whose hymns to Hestia and Apollo were inscribed on the Athenian treasury at Delphi and which are probably to be connected to the New Music. [155] The victory recorded in the Parian Marble is most probably a kitharodic one, perhaps achieved at the Panathenaea. [156] Two tragic poets named Astydamas are known in the fourth century, father and son (Suda A 4264, 4265); the reference in A71 is probably to the younger (TrGF 60). [157] Of Stesichorus the second nothing is known but the victory noted by the Parian Marble. In sum, the seven victories qualified as having taking place “in Athens” range from dithyrambic and kitharodic to tragic. Incidentally, three of these victories occupy an entry on their own: Melanippides (A47), Telestes (A65), and Aristonous (A67), all related to the so-called New Music.

In all probability, victories mentioned in the Parian Marble, even if not always qualified as “first,” were at the time considered to be the first ones ever achieved by the poets, or the first at a given contest. [158] The inscription, however, makes no reference to specific festivals. For the dramatic and dithyrambic poets we may assume that it was the City Dionysia to which chronographers usually refer. If Aristonous’s victory was indeed achieved at the Great Panathenaea, perhaps information may derive in this case from a Panathenaic victor list.

The Parian Marble is inconsistent in the range of agonistic information it offers, notwithstanding the formulaic language. Categories of competition are explicit sometimes, as with Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides (“in tragedy”) and Polyidus (“in dithyramb”). Sometimes a qualification of the poet clarifies the type of competition, as with Philemon, Menander, and Anaxandrides (komoidopoios), as well as Philoxenus (dithyrambopoios). However, the victories of a few poets are generally qualified as achieved “in Athens” (Melanippides, Simonides the elder and the younger, Telestes, Aristonous, Astydamas, and Stesichorus the second). These three modalities in the agonistic references may ultimately derive from different sources. It is striking that no information on the festivals in which victories were achieved appears, nor any reference to choregoi or tribes for the dithyramb (apart from the qualification of Simonides as didaskalos). Such omissions of common didascalic information may indicate that none was available, perhaps because lists were used indirectly. Alternatively, information about specific festivals may have been deemed unimportant outside Athens. Indeed, the specification that ten poets won their victories “in Athens” [159] makes better sense if the chronicle was composed for a non-Athenian audience.

The Parian Marble shows that agonistic documentation was probably the most visible manifestation of literary history within ancient Greek communities, both in the official memory maintained by public records and in the scholarly approach to the biographies of poets. From the end of the sixth century BCE, entries provide information almost exclusively on poetic victories, thus reflecting the cultural conditions of production of musical and poetic works and their consumption in classical Athens, as well as the construction of a history based upon them. In its emphasis on being first, implied both by poetic victories and heuremata, the Parian Marble reflects the general perception of literary history as a scene of competition.

3. Literary History in the Parian Marble

To conclude this chapter, a rather pragmatic question is in order. Can a literary historian trust, and to what extent, the dates transmitted by the Parian Marble? Most information regarding victories and deaths of poets seems to rest on solid traditions, written or oral. The dates are not necessarily right, but they do not appear to result from techniques of chronological computation, genealogical thinking, or synchronization. Not, perhaps, to be trusted are the dates before the fifth century BCE, including early heuremata, as well as the origins of choral and dramatic competitions. The real value of the Parian Marble, therefore, lies in the possible implications of its idiosyncratic choice of poets and events more than in their chronology.

The objective style of the inscription may seem to convey objective data, but literary history in the Parian Marble is intentional, not less than general history is (see chap. 4, sect. 5). [160] Beginning as a record of pan-Hellenic achievement, with Hyagnis, Orpheus, Mousaeus, Homer, Hesiod, Terpander, Sappho, and Hipponax, the chronicle limits its scope to Attica and Athens. If general history appears to stream centrifugally from Athens towards East and West, literary history seems to be drawn centripetally towards Athens. That author and audience may have construed such an Athenocentric view on the development of poetry as teleological would be an interesting, though speculative, suggestion.

Limitation of scope is not only geographical. The extant inscription dispenses with orators and historians. Among philosophers, Socrates, Anaxagoras, and Aristotle are mentioned, but not Plato. [161] As for poetry, comparison with the so-called canonical authors is illuminating. [162] For epic poetry only the indisputable Homer and Hesiod are mentioned, not Antimachus, Panyassis, or Pisander. Iambic poetry is represented by Hipponax, but elegy is absent. [163] Lyric poetry features Sappho, Simonides, and Stesichorus, but the dithyramb seems to dominate, [164] and if Alcaeus [165] and Pindar are missing, the New Music is well represented, with Melanippides, Telestes, Polyidus, Philoxenus, Timotheus, and possibly Aristonous too. [166] Susarion and Epicharmus denote Comedy. Aristophanes is most conspicuously missing in the extant text, but New Comedy is represented or instantiated by at least three poets: Anaxandrides, Philemon, and Menander. Tragedy includes not only the triad of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, but also the “modern” Astydamas, Sosiphanes I, and Sosiphanes II. In sum, the Parian Marble most clearly favors the competitive genres performed at Athenian festivals: tragedy, comedy, and dithyramb. Such an institutional approach to literary history, partly depending on the sources available, may explain why minor poetic genres were for the most part disregarded. [167]

The question whether the selection of poets and their distribution belongs to the author or his sources is difficult to gauge. The Parian Marble was composed within a tradition in which poets functioned as chronographic milestones, especially figures that could be synchronized with major historical events, such as Homer with the Trojan War. A great amount of information became available with the Athenian agonistic records of the fifth and fourth centuries precisely for the competitive genres of classical Athens. Research on the lives of poets by Glaucus of Rhegium and others surely provided materials for the biography of poets, including inventions and first victories. Similarities with Dioscorides suggest the Peplos or other similar works as possible intermediate sources in those realms. However, beyond the availability of information for literary history, many of the poets are chronographically unnecessary and were mentioned for their own sake, which may be an indication of authorial purpose. Similarly, the intriguing list of poets may be interpreted as the result of the author’s choice. Indeed, it is striking that twelve poets are mentioned after the death of Euripides (A63) and Sophocles (A64). The number of poets is significantly smaller in the Parian fragment (B), which mentions only Philemon (B7), Menander (B14), Sosiphanes I (B15), and Sosiphanes II (B22). This may be due to the general change in focus to other parts of the Mediterranean (chap. 4, sect. 4), to the political demise of Athens, to the lack of appropriate sources for poetic victories in more recent periods, or to a combination of any of these factors. Still, a third of the poets and musicians mentioned in the Parian Marble are representatives of the late fourth-century poetry, [168] New Music, New Comedy, and perhaps New Tragedy, as well. In this sense, the Parian Marble’s outlook differs utterly from the ancient lists of best authors developed in Hellenistic Alexandria. [169] These are much better reflected in the late antique Chronicle of Jerome (and its Greek original, the Canons of Eusebius) where we find fewer fifth-century dramatists than iambic, elegiac and lyric poets, and no fourth-century poets at all (see n. 35 above). The Parian Marble’s alternative canon of poets, to use a somewhat provocative term, seems to have developed separately, combining chronographic traditions and techniques and available scholarly works with a taste for contemporary performance poetry. Such independence is consistent with the idiosyncratic count-down of years, the lack of chronographic sophistication, and perhaps also with the avoidance of papyrus format in the layout of the inscription. [170] Whether the Parian Marble’s stance regarding literary history was unique remains a question for further investigation. However, if the chronicle was conceived for display and consultation at a site for literary activities such as the Archilocheion (chap. 1, sect. 5 above), didactic concerns may have played a role in the selection of authors. Thus, along with the major events of panhellenic history and the classical poets, late fourth-century poetry appears to have been part of the knowledge expected from an educated man, perhaps even worthy of study, collection, and re-performance.

Footnotes

[ back ] 1. Known only from the Parian Marble are the poets Hypodicus of Chalcis (A46), Simonides the elder (A49), Stesichorus the second (A73), and the younger Sosiphanes (B22).

[ back ] 2. Most notably, the Parian Marble serves as a reference point in reconstructing the chronology of dramatic Athenian contests (Capps 1900, Wilhelm and Kaibel 1906, Reisch 1907, Mette 1977, and, more recently, Millis and Olson 2012).

[ back ] 4. Hellanicus’s list of victors at the Carneian festival provided a framework for dating early poets and musicians (FGrH 4 F 85a = Athenaeus 635e; FGrH 4 F 86 = scholia V to Aristophanes Birds 1403). Some scholars believe it may have offered further information on the musical history of Greece (Ambaglio 1980:38–39, Möller 2001:245–246, contra Blum 1991:19). On Hellanicus’s role in the historiography of music and his work on the Carneian Victors, see Franklin 2010:17–23. Franklin 2012 argues that Hellanicus focused on the Lesbian singers at the Carneia.

[ back ] 5. On Hippias’s and Critias’s concerns with matters of poetic history, see Lanata 1963:208–213, 218–223.

[ back ] 7. As I argue elsewhere (Rotstein 2007 and 2010:74–88), chapters 4 and 5 of the Poetics combine two different approaches to the history of poetry: one empirical or inductive, based on information partly available from public records, the other theoretical or deductive, based on perceived analogies between genres.

[ back ] 8. See Blum 1991:47–52 for the contribution of the so-called school of Aristotle to literary history.

[ back ] 9. Πυθιονικῶν ἀναγραφή (SIG3 275 = FGrH 124 T 23; for a study of testimonies, see Hose 2002:108–109, 266–269), inscribed in 331 BCE. Cf. Diogenes Laertius’s reference to a book entitled Πυθιονῖκαι μουσικῆς (5.1.26, we should disregard the common correction Πυθιονῖκαι ⟨αʹ Περὶ⟩ μουσικῆς αʹ; the book was an incomplete catalogue or a summary, according to Homolle 1898:267). The inscription perhaps included legendary material (Gostoli 1986, Wilson 2004:270–271, Franklin 2013:221n43). On the role of these lists in ancient literary history, see Blum 1991:23.

[ back ] 10. Νῖκαι Διονυσιακαί and Διδασκαλίαι may have used the same state archives as the so-called Fasti (IG II.2 2318), Didascaliae (IG II.2 2319–23a) and Victor list (IG II.2 2325), recently edited by Millis and Olson 2012 (for a study of testimonies, see Hose 2002:110–113, 270–280). On the Athenian didascalic records, see Sickinger 1999:41–47, with further references. The precise relationship between these catalogues and Aristotle’s lists is a matter of dispute (cf. Blum 1991:24–43).

[ back ] 11. Little is known about the Sikyon inscription (FGrH 550; cf. Chaniotis 1988:89–91), used by Heraclides of Pontus and known to us exclusively through [Plutarch] OnMusic 1131f–1132a.

[ back ] 12. Towards the end of the fifth century BCE, Glaucus of Rhegium wrote a book “On Ancient Poets and Musicians” ([Plutarch] On Music 1132–1133; Glaucus’s fragments are collected in FHG 2.23–24; see Lanata 1963:270–281, Huxley 1968, and more recently Franklin 2010:23–29). The peripatetic scholars Phainias of Eresus (ca. 375–300 BCE, Wehrli 9:9–43) and Demetrius of Phalerum (ca. 360–280 BCE, FGrH 228, Fortenbaugh and Schütrumpf 2000) are credited with works On Poets. Little remains from Aristotle’s book On Poets (fragments are collected by Rose 1967 frr. 70–75 and Breitenberger 2006:293–298, with commentary on pp. 332–346).

[ back ] 13. The two books of On the Iambic Poets by the third-century BCE Lysanias of Cyrene (Athenaeus 620c) are lost. The peripatetic Heraclides of Pontus (ca. 390–322 BCE, Wehrli 7, Schütrumpf 2008; see also Barker 2009 for musical history) and Chamaeleon of Heracleia (ca. 350–281 BCE, Wehrli 9:49–88, Martano, Matelli, and Mirhady 2012; and see Arrighetti 1987:141–159) wrote biographies on a number of poets. The fragments of the Epicurean Metrodorus of Lampsacus (ca. 331–278 BCE) are collected by Körte 1890.

[ back ] 14. One of the main difficulties in the study of ancient Greek literary history is the fact that aetiological explanations may have been responsible for much of the relevant information (see Arrighetti 1987:141–228, Martano, Matelli, and Mirhady 2012:426-430, for the so-called Method of Chamaeleon). The ancients did not distinguish the discipline of literary criticism from that of literary history. Ancient critics often employed seemingly historical arguments as explanatory tools. Such explanations may not indicate howthingsreallywere, but they certainly show how literary history was perceived (cf. Rotstein 2016). Graziosi 2002, Nagy 2009, Kivilo 2010, Koning 2010, and Lefkowitz 2012 (a precursor, originally published in 1981) are useful for assessing ancient biographies of poets with such distinctions in mind.

[ back ] 15. E.g. Dopp 1883:5. Katherine Clarke (2008:226–277) eloquently sums up the general impression: “The Parian Marble offers the most stunning demonstration of how the inscribed past, measured out primarily in terms of political power—first kings and then archons—could be heavily punctuated also by the history of invention and that of intellectual or literary prowess.”

[ back ] 16. I have examined Grayson 1975 as well as Glassner and Foster 2004 (I am grateful to Matt Waters for the references).

[ back ] 17. Apollodorus’s Chronicle mentions nineteen philosophers, ten poets, four historians, two doctors and two of the Seven Sages.

[ back ] 24. Two tragic poets of similar name, pace Munro 1901b:361 (see note to the Greek text of B22). The Roman numbers are mine.

[ back ] 25. A79 may have included a reference to a philosopher: ]ΣΟΦΟΣ, perhaps Plato (Tod 1957:132n2), but Munro 1901b:360 had reservations (see note to Greek text). I do not count Demetrius of Phalerum, supplemented by Jacoby and others in B20.

[ back ] 27. The extant text mentions no religious events. Among the political and military figures in the Roman Chronicle are Solon, Croesus (twice), Pisistratus, Cyrus, Cambyses, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, Hipparchus, Darius, Xerxes, and Themistocles.

[ back ] 28. Solon is mentioned as archon and lawgiver, not as a poet (B, line 2).

[ back ] 29. Cf. Tod 1957:32 (note, however, that Terpander is not the only representative of music in the Parian Marble, as Tod suggests).

[ back ] 30. SEG 33 802. See chap. 3, sect. 2 for text, translation, and further comparison with the Parian Marble.

[ back ] 31. Xenophanes is counted among philosophers. The extant text mentions no religious events. Among the political and military figures in the Getty Table are Phalaris, Pisistratus (line 7 suppl.), Croesus, Cyrus (three times), Cambyses (twice), Darius, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, and Hipparchus.

[ back ] 33. Parisinus Graecus 2600. The extant text is a result of both trimming and expansion (Mosshammer 1979:138, Christesen 2007:248–249). A new edition of the Greek text in Christesen 2007:386–407, Christesen and Martirosova-Torlone 2006 (with English translation). The victor list was part of Eusebius’ Chronographia. It survives also in a fifth-century Armenian translation (which Christesen and Martirosova-Torlone 2006 used in the constitution of the text).

[ back ] 34. Eusebius’ Canons are the second part of his Chronicle, the first being the Chronographia, of which only an Olympic victor list survived in a Greek manuscript (see note above). Jerome’s Latin translation, as well as an Armenian translation, two Syriac epitomes and excerpts from Byzantine chronicles (the Paschal Chronicle, Syncellus and other) have been variously used for reconstructing the Greek original of Eusebius’ Canons (on the witnesses to Eusebius’ Canons and the apologetic and revolutionary nature of his work, see Mosshammer 1979:29-83, Burgess 1999:21-27, Christesen and Martirosova-Torlone 2006:34-48, Christesen 2007:232-250, with further references). Considering the difficulties involved in both source and textual criticism, it seems best to approach Jerome’s Chronicle as a text of its own right. For an introduction to Jerome’s Chronicle and the use of Helms’s 1956 edition, see Burgess 2002. Burgess 1997 examines the dates of Eusebius’ editions, Burgess and Kulikowski 2009 set Jerome’s work in the context of the Latin chronicle tradition.

[ back ] 36. On the sources of Eusebius’ Canons, see Mosshammer 1979:128-168, Burgess 1999:79-84, with further references.

[ back ] 37. Mosshamer (1979:306) puts the problem most eloquently: “Tradition, record, and mathematical construction combine to produce chronological systems within which it is often difficult to distinguish the contemporary record from the scholarly inference.”

[ back ] 39. Genealogy was one of the five genres of ancient Greek historiography, according to Jacoby 1909 (for criticism of his developmental approach, see Marincola 2012 with further references). On genealogical thinking and chronology, see Mosshammer 1979:101–105, Fowler 1998-1999, and Clarke 2008:201–203.

[ back ] 40. “Hellanikos and Damastes and Pherekydes trace his [Homer’s] ancestry to Orpheus. For they say that Maion the father of Homer and Hesiod’s father Dios were sons of Apellis, son of Melanopos, son of Epiphrades, son of Chariphemos, son of Philoterpes, son of Idmonis, son of Eukles, son of Dorion, son of Orpheus” (FGrH 3 F 167 = FGrH 4 F 5b = FGrH 5 F 11b, translated by W. S. Morison, BNJ 3 F 167). Similarly, Hellanicus (FGrH 4 F 5a) claimed Hesiod’s descent from Orpheus (ten generations stood between them), while Damastes (FGrH 5 F 11) claimed Homer’s descent from Mousaeus with a ten-generations span. Tatianus accounts that Theagenes of Rhegium, Stesimbrotus of Thasos, and Antimachus of Colophon were among the earliest to write on Homer’s poetry, genealogy, and chronology (FGrH 107 F 21 = FGrH 70 F 98). In contrast, Herodotus displays no interest in the genealogies of poets. Traditions regarding the genealogies of early poets are catalogued by Kivilo 2010, and analyzed by Lefkowitz 2012 (first published in 1981), Graziosi 2002 (Homer), Nagy 2009 (Hesiod), and Koning 2010 (Hesiod).

[ back ] 41. Orpheus is dated to 1135 (= 1398/7 BCE) and Homer to 643 (= 907/6 BCE). The year for Mousaeus is lost, and for Hesiod is faulty. The series Orpheus, Mousaeus, Hesiod, Homer appears in Aristophanes’ catalogue of beneficial poets in Frogs 1030–1036; see below.

[ back ] 42. Karanika 2010. Orpheus is linked to the Argonauts in the later chronographic tradition (Jerome Chronicle 56b).

[ back ] 43. West 1983:20–24, 39–44. The dating was controversial, as apparent from the theory of two poets named Orpheus (Pherecydes FGrH 3 F 26), which Herodotus rejected (2.53). Herodotus (7.6.3) doubted the authenticity of poetry attributed to Orpheus and Mousaeus.

[ back ] 44. Orpheus is a supplement first proposed by Prideaux 1676, a very plausible one considering the context. Le Paulmier suggests Παμφώς, a figure that later evidence connects to Athens and Demeter’s cult, but Orpheus’ link to Eleusis is much better documented. As for Mousaeus, his name is secure, but it remains doubtful whether Eumolpus was mentioned at the beginning of the entry and whether he was considered Mousaeus’ son, as restoration suggests. In our sources Eumolpus is either son of Mousaeus (scholia to Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 1053 = FGrH 10 F 13, Suda s.v. Μουσαῖος and Εὔμολπος; cf. West 1983:41), or Mousaeus’ father (Philochorus FGrH 320 F 208 = scholia RV to Aristophanes Frogs 1033). Graf (1974:18) regards the latter as a secondary tradition. According to Henrichs (1985:6), the double genealogy indicates rival tendencies in fourth-century Eleusis.

[ back ] 45. Orpheus is attested as Mousaeus’ father from the first century CE (P.Berol 13044, cf. Diodorus 4.25.1; see West 1983:41n12, Currie 2011). For the complex genealogy of Mousaeus, see LIMC s.v.; testimonies in PEG II.3 Mousaeus fr. 19.

[ back ] 47. On the Homeridai, see Pindar Nemean 2.1, a reference explained by the scholion to the line, with Graziosi 2002:201–217. On Terpander’s apogonoi, see Aristotle fr. 545 Rose = Gostoli T 60c, with Gostoli 1990:XLIX and Power 2010:331–332. If Tarditi’s suggestion (1956:139) that the Mnesiepes inscription was set up by a rhapsodic thiasos is accepted, it then follows as a reasonable hypothesis that its members may have claimed descent from Archilochus.

[ back ] 48. Heracleides’ inference that Amphion was taught the art of kitharody by his father (Zeus) is illuminating (fr. 157 Wehrli = [Plutarch] OnMusic 1131f–1132a). The best-documented cases are the theatrical families of Athens, a phenomenon Sutton (1987) assesses as mainly educational. In contrast, diadochai, “succesions,” may involve learning from a master (in the ExcerptsfromNicomachus 1, Orpheus is said to have taught Thamyris and Linus, and Linos to have taught Hercules). I am grateful to John Franklin for the reference.

[ back ] 55. Also: Sappho and Rhodopis (2.134), Anacreon and Polycrates (3.121), Olen, Arge, and Opis (4.35), Alcaeus and Pisistratus (5.95), Simonides and Eualcides, an athlete who died at the battle of Ephesus (5.102), Solon and the Cyprian revolt (5.113.2), Phrynichus and the fall of Miletus (6.21.2). Herodotus is not less concerned with matters of chronology, authenticity, and details of public performance (Legrand 1964:149–156) than with displaying his own cultural sophistication (Ford 2006), which may explain some of his seemingly incidental references.

[ back ] 56. On postscripts in the Parian Marble, see chap. 4, sect. 1.

[ back ] 57. Birth could then be calculated as forty years prior to the event that attests to poetic maturity, such as a first victory. On the theory of intellectual maturity, see Mosshammer 1979:119–127, with further references.

[ back ] 63. In the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, although the poets are said to be contemporary so as to compete together, Hesiod is at the end of his career, and Homer at its onset (cf. Graziosi 2002:104–107).

[ back ] 64. A puzzling verb (it appears again in B25), probably derived from a source antedating the systematic chronographic use of acme.

[ back ] 65. The verb ἐγένετο is used in the Parian Marble for “coming into being,” either for an institution (Panionian league A27) or for people, i.e. “being born” (Euripides A50, Ptolemy II B19), and more generally for “happening,” “taking place” (A3, A4, A16, A19, A48, A51, A52, A72).

[ back ] 67. Mosshammer 1979:228 suggests Phainias or Glaucus to be the Parian Marble’s sources on this point.

[ back ] 68. Hellanicus recorded Terpander as the first victor at the Carneian Games and synchronized him with Midas (FGrH 4 F 85 b; cf. Mosshammer 1979:227). Gostoli 1990:2–7 collects and Kivilo 2010:158–163 studies the testimonies regarding the chronology of Terpander.

[ back ] 70. The stone is broken at the point where Selden, whose dots not always represent a precise number of missing letters, reports ἀφ᾿ οὗ . . . . . . . ο . . υ (see note to the Greek text of A33). Similarly cautious is Ornaghi 2009:276. If Archilochus’s name appeared in A33, perhaps he was credited as well with one or more inventions in the realms of poetry or even music (on Archilochus’s poetic and musical innovations, see Rotstein 2010:230‒234, with further references).

[ back ] 71. Kivilo 2000:182–183. The papyrus fragments [98 LP] mentioned by Mosshammer 1979:345n6 do not necessarily refer to Sappho’s own exile.

[ back ] 72. Mosshammer (1979:253) suggests as the source of this information Phainias of Eresus (Lesbos), who is also a possible source for another reference to Lesbos’s literary history, i.e. the entry on Terpander. Information may ultimately stem from a Sicilian historiographical work (contra Jacoby 1904b:191).

[ back ] 76. Bowra 1934:115, cf. 118–119, and West 1971:305. Stesichorus’ travel could be taken metaphorically, as Bowie suggests (cf. Dopp 1883:47). His arrival to Greece would refer to the integration of his poetry into Athenian agonistic culture, in the choral competitions in which Hypodicus of Chalcis first won, according to A46 (Bowie, forthcoming). So far, no alternative has been proposed to Le Paulmier’s ἀ[φίκετ]ο.

[ back ] 77. Mosshammer 1979:308, Jacoby 1904a:xvii–xvii; Jacoby 1904b:93–94 suggests that much information on literary matters could have reached the author through Aristoxenus.

[ back ] 78. For a call for caution when dealing with the historicity of “mythical poets,” see Beecroft 2008:226.

[ back ] 81. E.g. Frogs 1030–1036, [Plutarch] OnMusic. Other poets located at the early stages in the history of mousike, such as Demodocus and Phemius, result from reading the Homeric poems as referring to realia (Heraclides fr. 157 Wehrli = [Plutarch] OnMusic 1131f–1132c; see Gostoli 1986).

[ back ] 84. The verb ἐκτίθημι means “expose,” “exhibit,” e.g. the text of the law, “expound,” “put forward” an argument, while the middle voice is often used for citations. The simple use of active aorist with direct object, “made public poetry / poems / astrology” is rather unusual, and probably refers to the publication of texts either in oral or in written form. Cf. Jerome’s publicavit with reference to Sophocles (Chronicle 109m), where the Paschal Chronicle (303.10) and Syncellus (305.12) have ἐπεδείξατο, referring to public performance.

[ back ] 86. The polemics involved the authenticity of some of the poems and oracles attributed to Orpheus and Mousaeus (Herodotus 7.6.3, Aristotle fr. 7 Rose). In the case of Orpheus, the controversy was solved by Herodorus of Heraclea through the hypothesis of two poets of the same name (FGrH 31 F 42), see n. 51 above.

[ back ] 87. West 1983:41. On the nature of that poem, see more recently Currie 2011.

[ back ] 88. Kleingünther 1933, Traede 1962, Bartol 2006. See Clarke 2008:226–227 for the history of discovery in Diodorus, D’Angour 2011 for heuresis in the Greeks’ general attitude towards novelty, and esp. pp. 184–206 for novelty in the realm of music.

[ back ] 93. On the history of the lyre, the first of the ExcerptsfromNicomachus offers a combination of invention (Hermes), transmission (Hermes gave it to Orpheus, who taught Thamyris and Linos, who in turn taught Hercules), loss (after Orpheus’ death), and rediscovery (by Terpander in Lesbos). The text may possibly go back to Hellanicus (Franklin 2003:306n12 and personal communication).

[ back ] 94. Herodotus attributed the dithyramb to Arion of Methymna (Herodotus 1.23), while Lasus of Hermione was favored by Hellanicus in the CarneanVictors, as well as by Dicaearchus in OnDionysiacContests as the first to have staged cyclic choruses (Hellanicus and Dicaearchus, FGrH 4 F 86 = scholia to Aristophanes Birds 1403). On the complex issue of the origins of the dithyramb and the early terminology, see the relevant testimonies collected by Ierano 1997, and the contributions to Kowalzig and Wilson 2013, with further references.

[ back ] 96. Heuremata explicit through the verb “invented”: A10 (“first invented” auloi and nomoi), A11 (twice), A39 (Susarion). Heuremata implicit through the adverb “first”: A10 (first Panathenaic games), A12 (suppl.), A43 (Thespis), A46 (men’s choruses). Three of the heuremata in the list are not marked as such in the text, but tradition allows their inclusion (A9, A30, A34). Simonides’s invention of mnemonics (A54) appears as a qualification, rather than an event.

[ back ] 97. The earliest invention attested in Greek literature, in a fragment of the anonymous Phronis (Kleingünther 1933:10, Bartol 2006:85).

[ back ] 99. A testimony by Sopater Rhetor (fourth century CE) speaks of Terpander as singing to the aulos: ὅτι τοῖς αὐλοῖς εἰς ὁμόνοιαν ἤγαγε τὴν Λακεδαιμονίων πόλιν κιθαρῳδὸς ὤν (5:21 Walz). The testimony, omitted by Gostoli, was noted by Slings 1991 and Campbell 1993. I am grateful to John Franklin for the references.

[ back ] 100. Recent work on Terpander has contributed to understanding his emblematic role in the history of kitharody (Beecroft 2008:111–112, Power 2010:317–422). Although Terpander does not appear to be linked to any other poet or musician in the Parian Marble, the possible supplement of Archilochus in A33 would set Terpander as the younger poet. For the possibility that this, as well as some other references to literary and musical history in the Parian Marble, may go back to Hellanicus, see Franklin 2012.

[ back ] 101. It is possible that the name Agnis (Ἄγνις) stands for Hyagnis (Ὓαγνις) in the third-century CE Monnus mosaic in Trier (CIL XIII 3710; cf. Kretschmer 1911:156–157, Daniel 1996:33).

[ back ] 106. Hyagnis was the father of Marsyas, according to [Plutarch] OnMusic 1132f, 1133e; Olympus was a disciple of Marsyas, Suda O. 219. The three are described as inventors of the aulos ([Plutarch] OnMusic 1135f) and the Phrygian harmony (Anon. Bellermanni 28).

[ back ] 112. The fragments of the Peplos are collected in Rose 1967:394–407, frr. 637–644.

[ back ] 113. Porphyrius ap. Eustathius Commentary on Homer’s Iliad β 557. The funerary epigrams may have been a later addition, perhaps no earlier than the second century BCE (Wilamowitz, Wendling 1891, Rose 1967, Cameron 1995). Focusing exclusively on the epigrams, as Gutzwiller (2010:223) has argued, does not give a whole picture of the entire work.

[ back ] 118. Jacoby (1904a:51) rejected this hypothesis and proposed that a lost work on the history of music, written towards the end of the fifth century BCE, was the source for Dioscorides through Aristoxenus, whereas the author of the Parian Marble would have gotten the information through Ephorus, perhaps from a book OnDiscoveries. However, further similarities support the hypothesis of a common source. The entry mentioning Hyagnis in the Parian Marble refers also to the invention of the chariot and to the first Panathenaea, whereas the Peplos dealt with both heuremata and the history of ancient contests. Furthermore, another epigram by Dioscorides (Anthologia Palatina 7.410) mentions the same prizes that the Parian Marble does for comedy and tragedy (see below).

[ back ] 119. Testimonies on Susarion are collected by Pickard-Cambridge 1962:280–284. Susarion was Icarian according to Clemens (Stromata 1.16.79). Some of the sources make Susarion a Megarian (fr. 1, transmitted by Tzetzes), perhaps endorsing the Doric, more specifically, Megarean claims mentioned by Aristotle (Poetics 1448a). See Piccirilli 1974 and Rusten 2006:43–44 for Susarion in the context of the Attic and Doric claims to have originated comedy. For Susarion as heuretes of iambic poetry, see Rotstein 2010:43–44.

[ back ] 120. “The prize was at first” (adverbial), not “the first prize” (attributive).

[ back ] 121. According to one possible restoration, which (following Connor 1990:26–32) I have omitted from the Greek text of the Parian Marble, Thespis’s performance would have taken place “in town” (ἐν ἄ]στε̣ι̣), i.e. at the City Dionysia, in contrast to the rural celebration.

[ back ] 122. Pickard-Cambridge 1962:104–105, with sources on Thespis on 97–102.

[ back ] 129. Ἡ πάτριος τῶν Διονυσίων ἑορτὴ τὸ παλαιὸν ἐπέμπετο δημοτικῶς καὶ ἱλαρῶς· ἀμφορεὺς οἴνου καὶ κληματίς, εἶτα τράγον τις εἷλκεν, ἄλλος ἰσχάδων ἄρριχον ἠκολούθει κομίζων, ἐπὶ πᾶσι δ’ ὁ φαλλός. [ back ] “The traditional festival of the Dionysia was paraded in a popular and lighthearted fashion, and there was an amphora of wine and a vine branch, then someone dragged a goat, another followed carrying a wicker basket of dried figs, and, to top it all off, the phallus” (translated by Rusten and Henderson 2011:95).

[ back ] 141. As soon as the Parian section of our inscription was published (1897), information was incorporated by Capps 1900, Wilhelm and Kaibel 1906, and Reisch 1907 in their works on the Athenian dramatic records.

[ back ] 142. The best-preserved agonistic inscriptions concern the dramatic competitions at the Athenian Dionysia and Lenaea (Millis and Olson 2012). Wilson studied the institutional framework of dithyrambic and dramatic competitions in Athens and elsewhere (Wilson 2000; Wilson 2003, 2007a, 2007b, 2008). See Rotstein 2012 for the programs of non-dramatic contests in the fourth century BCE.

[ back ] 147. See, for example, Pausanias’ history of the early Pythian agon (10.7.4–6), where the focus on winners suggests that it derives partly from available written records, even though, as Franklin suggests (personal communication), some of the material may have been fabricated. Ford (2002:272–293) assesses the impact of the agonistic tradition on ancient literary criticism.

[ back ] 149. Restoration of his name in A47 seems quite secure. The Suda speaks of two different poets named Melanippides (s.v. M 454 and 455). The elder was born (rather than flourished [γεγονώς], see below) in the sixty-fifth Olympiad (520–516 BCE), an author of dithyrambs, epic poems, epigrams, and elegies. The younger Melanippides, the dithyrambic poet known for his musical innovation, lived at the Macedonian court of Perdiccas (ca. 450–ca. 413 BCE). The Parian Marble’s entry seems to offer an early dithyrambic victory by Melanippides the elder. However, as Rohde suggested, the fact that the two poets are given the same patronymic, Criton, and that the younger Melanippides is said to be a θυγατριδοῦς, a son of a daughter, yet with the same name as the grandfather, raises suspicion. Since no other source mentions two different poets named Melanippides of Melos, it seems best to follow Rohde and conclude that this is another instance of mistaken homonymous poets given by the Suda (Rohde 1878:213–214, Smyth 1906:453, LeVen 2008:38n26), see n. 51 above. Contra Jacoby 1904a:110–112, who takes this to be the elder Melanippides. Cf. Ierano 1997:209–210.

[ back ] 150. Not necessarily his grandfather, see note to Greek text.

[ back ] 151. Ctesias ap. Diodorus 14.46.6; Plutarch Life of Alexander 8.3; Athenaeus 637a cites from a dithyramb entitled Hymenaeus. In contrast, the Suda refers to him as κωμικός.

[ back ] 153. So Munro 1901b:358; I cannot think of a better supplement than Aristonous for a poet whose name began with Ar[i]sto[ or Ar[i]sta[ and was victorious at or near 399/8 BCE (apart, perhaps, from a certain Aristarchus who won a dithyrambic victory at the Dionysia of 415 BCE [IG I.2 770a]).

[ back ] 157. So Capps 1900:41–45, Mette 1977:30, based on the Parian Marble; contra Jacoby 1904a:117–119, Wilhelm and Kaibel 1906:186. The elder Astydamas’s first production is dated to 398 BCE (Diodorus Siculus 14.43.5), and his first victory at the Dionysia between 376 and 362 BCE.

[ back ] 158. Victories qualified as first: Hypodicus (A46), Aeschylus (A50), Euripides (A60), Telestes (A65), Menander (B14). Inconsistencies with information deriving mostly from other sources, especially Athenian victor lists, are usually resolved by the hypothesis that they refer to the Lenaea or to first productions (so, for example, the Parian Marble’s placement of Philemon before Menander; Capps 1900:60, Wilhelm and Kaibel 1906:50, and more recently Iversen 2011:186–187, with further references).

[ back ] 163. Unless one restores Archilochus in A33 and takes him as representative of both elegy and iambos.

[ back ] 164. Hypodicus’s choruses are not described as cyclic or as dithyrambic. In contrast, Polyidus and Philoxenus are explicitly connected to dithyramb. The victories by Melanippides and Simonides are most probably dithyrambic.

[ back ] 166. According to Diodorus, the famous dithyrambic poets (οἱ ἐπισημότατοι διθυραμβοποιοί) Philoxenus, Timotheus, Telestes, and Polyidus flourished (ἤκμασαν) in the same year, the year concluding Ctesias of Cnidus’ PersianHistory (ap. Diodorus 14.46.6 = FGrH 688 T 9).

[ back ] 167. A similar reason may account for the near absence of lyric genres from the first chapters of Aristotle’s Poetics (Rotstein 2004). The selection of poets in the post-sixth-century BCE entries of the Parian Marble may be an expression of the cognitive prism that I elsewhere denominate the “agonistic interface” (Rotstein 2012:120).

[ back ] 168. Late fourth-century poets are studied by LeVen 2008 and, more recently, 2014, which I was unable to see before completing this book.

[ back ] 169. See n. 162 above. On the concept of “selected authors,” see Pfeiffer 1968:204–207; on notions of canon and canon-making, see Finkelberg and Stroumsa 2003, with further references.

[ back ] 170. Jacoby noted the contrast between the unbookish layout of the Parian Marble, resulting from its very long lines, and the format of other inscriptions of the time (a late second-century BCE inscription on the foundation of Magnesia, IMagnesia 17) and the Epicurean inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda (early second century CE), to which we may add the contemporary Mnesiepes inscription, with columns resembling a papyrus-leaf. Jacoby (1904b:90–91 with n1) suggested the author was unaware of the book practices current in Alexandria. The layout of the Parian Marble, however, was probably a default choice (see Rotstein 2014).

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